Darwin Day 2013

If the UK can have Darwin on a coin, we can have one day to honor him, too.

Image credit: The Royal Mint

If Charles Darwin were alive today, he’d be celebrating his 204th birthday.

However, millions of years of evolution have prevented humans from living that long. Still, that doesn’t stop those of us who are alive today from celebrating the man and his work.

Evolution is the basis for all modern biology. It is the central tenet, the organizing theme, the trunk from which all branches grow. It has changed considerably since the early days when Darwin (and his contemporary Alfred Russel Wallace) first proposed the idea that species change over time*. They didn’t even have an idea behind the mechanism for it at the time, but that came eventually. We now have a far better understanding of genetics, and how random mutations can lead to gradual change for adaptation.

For biology, Darwin is the founder in much the same way Newton or Galileo was for physics. Things have changed, improved, but the root idea is still there, and has grown—you might even say evolved—since.

Because of this, there has been an informal movement over the years to declare February 12 as Darwin Day. I think that’s a fine idea. A lot of folks are taking the opportunity to throw various events, like art contests and biology lectures.

Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ) actually submitted a resolution to the House of Representatives to declare February 12th as Darwin Day, which I support, though I have more than a suspicion he has an uphill battle ahead of him on this. Far too many members of Congress think the Earth is less than 10,000 years old, with far too many of them sitting on the House Science Committee. Of course, to be fair, having even one is one too many.

[*Note: In an attempt to be brief, I wrote that Darwin proposed the idea that species change over time. That idea had actually been around for some time; Darwin’s big idea was to ascribe that to natural selection. Sorry for any confusion this may have caused.]